Halloween Festivities

Halloween was so much fun at our house this year. My sister Jenny was here to help us celebrate, and we started things off right on Wednesday night with some pumpkin carving / decorating:

On Friday, we took Brennan trick-or-treating at Daddy's work...

And on Halloween morning Jenny and I took Brennan to his first live symphony concert!  The Nashville Symphony Orchestra performed "Halloween on the High Seas," a concert geared toward children ages 3 - 8.  It was a little less than an hour in length and had a storyline woven through the concert about pirates looking for a key to a treasure chest that could only be opened on Halloween.  It was engaging but not cheesy, fun but still a classy symphony.

All of the musicians dressed up as pirates or sea creatures in honor of Halloween.  One person even played with an eye patch on!

Before the concert started there were great pre-concert activities in the hallways and lobbies.  There was an instrument petting zoo, allowing kids to touch and try most of the instruments in the orchestra.  Of course, Brennan didn't want to try any of them and was shy and uncomfortable.  The only thing he was willing to do was sit in Jenny's lap at a piano when no one else was in line.

There were also some tables for coloring parrots on sticks which were later incorporated into the concert, but of course, Brennan didn't want to color, either.  He did, however, want to play a ring toss game, and would have kept tossing all day, whether he got a prize or not.

The Halloween fun ended on Saturday night when we went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.  I don't have any photos of the affair since it was dark and I already had pictures of Brennan in his costume, but suffice it to say it was a huge hit.  Brennan ran with such enthusiasm from house to house, and that was a huge change from last year when we couldn't convince him to leave the house!  Jenny and I had fun reliving our childhood through Brennan.  The whole week was fun for everyone.